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MillimeterAccelerating HD for Idol
Apr 13, 2005 3:41 PM
Accelerating HD for Idol
by Michael Goldman
As part of the Fox Network’s ongoing move toward HD acquisition for many shows, the network converted production of all interviews and field recordings for American Idol this year from DigiBeta to Panasonic VariCam (AJ-HDC27) acquisition. Fox picked the VariCam because of its native 720p capabilities, in keeping with the network’s choice of 720p as its standard HD format (16:9, 720p, 59.94, to be exact).
That choice, however, only addressed half of the HD equation, since American Idol also needed to be mastered to HD. This was a complicated proposition, considering the live performance nature of the show, which requires turnarounds as quick as a couple of hours from performance to air for some segments, and the combination of taped elements with live elements for the broadcast of certain episodes. Therefore, editing facility Chainsaw, Santa Monica, under supervision from Bill DeRonde, Chainsaw’s president/owner and the show’s supervising editor, opted to rely on Avid’s DNxHD (10-bit, 220MBps) compression standard to shrink file sizes and speed up render times en-route to mastering each episode to Sony SR-CAM tape for broadcast.
While American Idol is not the first quick-turnaround TV show to use DNx, it does represent the most extensive use of the format to date on a hit show. And, DeRonde says, it is “just about the only way we could master this show in HD as Fox wants us to, and still turn it around in our timeframe.
“Without DNx, we would have to do it uncompressed, and that would add quite a lot of rendering and processing time.”
DeRonde says that, for certain segments, Chainsaw “live digitizes” material. It takes signals from studio cameras directly into four Avid Media Composer systems and one Avid Media Composer Adrenaline system, built on Avid’s Unity MediaNet storage solution, in order to quickly add those sequences to the standard-def offline cut, and then accelerates converting that cut to the DNx format for mastering in an Avid DS Nitris suite.
“As soon as I lock an act [as part of the offline] on a Monday night, we have to deliver the finished master to Fox by 9 a.m. the next morning,” DeRonde explains. “So as soon as I finish each act, it goes to the DS [Nitris] for the online, adding effects, layers, phone numbers, other graphics—all things that take render time. Then we master through Sony’s SRW-5000 deck to SR-CAM. That represents the master of all taped material. For most episodes, that material then gets combined with live studio [wrap-around] elements that are acquired using [portable Sony HDC-1500 studio cameras] and played back from the studio using DVC-PRO HD decks.”
Overall, DeRonde credits DNx with allowing his editing team to finish HD episodes “very close” to its previous standard definition turnaround.
“Next season, we expect the process to be even faster and more efficient,” he adds. “Right now, the DS [Nitris] does not talk to the Adrenaline in terms of sharing files, but in my discussions with Avid, they tell me they plan to have that capability shortly. When that happens, we will be able to use more Adrenaline stations as loading stations for the DS online. Currently, all conforming has to take place in the DS system, so that ties up that machine before we can do effects and titling. But once we can start the conform on Adrenaline, then we can keep Nitris for high-end compositing and graphics work. That will speed things up even more, which is crucial on a show like this.”
